To Stay or to Go

Explore opportunities#

Finally, there’s the question of whether to angle for promotion at your current company or to make the senior developer jump at a different company. That’s a call you’ll have to make, but you will always be better off at least interviewing at other companies. When you have an offer in hand from another company, you have a pretty much airtight case for promotion at your current company.

Find opportunities before they get advertised#

You’ve done the job hunt before; it’ll be a lot easier this time. Besides hunting via the regular channels (online posting, networking at meetups, and conferences), you should also be aware of new opportunities available to you at this stage. For example, recruiters of all stripes from an in-house, third-party, and venture capital will be more receptive to your cold emails.

You can also tap into your online relationships (formed via your writing or Twitter — you have been working on those, right?) to find opportunities before they get advertised. A warm intro of any sort beats applying via the front door and competing with everyone else on a five-second glance at your resume. Finally, a big part of selling yourself as a senior developer can communicate your level of experience in an interview; storytelling becomes a surprisingly big part of any senior hiring process.

Higher salary bumps when moving companies#

Salary bumps are known to be higher when you move companies. For example, instead of a 5-10% bump, you could get a 50-400% bump because you could join a company with a different pay scale in a different industry at a different level in a different city. Of course, these are major life changes, but higher bumps are more common when moving companies. There’s also the simple fact that you didn’t have much leverage when you were a junior dev. Now, you can actually take your time and practice some negotiation.

Diversify your resume#

You may also wish to diversify your resume. If you move from junior to senior in the same company, you have less exposure to a variety of projects, technologies, opinions, and cultures. If you’re at an agency, you may wish to consider moving to a startup. If you’re at a startup, you may wish to consider a BigCo. BigCo experience can net you big bucks at some forms of agency (including freelancing). So on and so forth. The earlier you are in your career, the easier it will be to hop around to figure out where you truly fit.

If you currently work at a place that doesn’t have a good developer brand, you may wish to move to one that does, which will help boost your network and personal brand. Few people question the technical ability of ex-Google engineers.

Conversely, if you currently work at a place with a good brand, you may wish to take more risk in your next gig for more personal growth and financial upside because the risk of failure is lower.